monsters in our hearts, we are forever apart
by lilypads
Summary: goddamn girl, your wounds are beautiful. —sasukesakura


**notes**: there's not much i can say about this. it's angst on another level and sasuke has always been irritatingly protective of the things he calls his own. tbh, i don't really like the ending, and this could have been a lot longer, possibly better. but i wrote it at 2am and basically didn't stop till i finished. kinda like freewriting.  
**notes**: also, there are probably some mistakes and shit. but if you're a regular reader of my work, you'll know that already.  
**notes**: lastly, this is some sick role reversal shit. don't even know. so done with these two fuckholes.

**disclaimer**: disclaimed.  
**summary**: goddamn girl, your wounds are beautiful. —sasukesakura

monsters in our hearts, we are forever apart

#

_one. _

They're twelve and it's early spring.

He's killed, he's hurt, he's shoved metal through skin; she has shook, she has cried, she has marked but never plunged. It has always been like this, since they were put on the same team. She is weak and she is unreliable—she's innocence personified, vulnerable to seeing harm done, susceptible to emotion. They are different in every single way.

Sasuke is covered in blood, his hair a dark and inky black and his eyes a nightmare.

Sakura is clean and pure, her bright hair pink as blossoms and her eyes like lily pads.

In between them is Naruto, the blaring sun that creates the bond that has them hanging on. He's shouting something obscene, being typically obnoxious whilst the air is crackling with anger and tension. Sasuke protects and kills—he puts himself before Sakura but exhales a fireball the size of a crater. Naruto has moved, but Sakura stays behind him, her trembles louder than his heartbeat.

"We'll crush you!" Naruto shouts, a dozen of him echoing throughout the battlefield.

Sasuke turns to look at Sakura, the doe of their team, the frightened little girl who wasn't ready. He makes a decision. He steps away, allowing her to defend herself whilst he takes down the most vicious enemy with Naruto.

He will come to regret this decision later.

/

She's on her knees, every stretch of skin a bloodied and bruised mess; he doesn't know what to do, wherever he looks, he see's nothing but red red red. Sasuke swallows led, bending down and cupping her chin. Her eyes are closed and her fingers shake like the wind through trees. There's nothing he can do but curse his own stupidity.

_—don't leave her, don't you dare let her get hurt, you hear me? _

And this is his punishment. The warm tears trailing down her cheeks, touching his fingers and engraving themselves into him.

_two_

#

His lungs burn and burn and burn, but he never stops.

Caught in a crossfire between a dozen kunai and his heart, he refuses to make the same mistake twice. It wasn't supposed to be like this—a simple escort mission gone awry. With Kakashi caught up in a fight, Naruto helping, Sasuke chooses his options wisely. Get Sakura, get her and never let her go.

It's a mantra of his past; things he doesn't let go of, because this is what it comes down to. The people he cares for (_those that still breathe_) are the strings that keep him going. So he runs and he runs and he doesn't stop and until he's there, in front of her. She's not shaking, she's not afraid, she's just alone. And that scares him more.

"You have to help them!" she screams at him, her eyes so wide, so insanely stubborn.

She knows why he's here—the times he's left her, the way he's turned his head and made a lifetimes worth of mistakes. But she shakes her head, her hair flying everywhere, and remains unmovable. "Sasuke-kun," Sakura urges, "_I'm fine._"

She's thirteen and he's still twelve. He narrows his eyes, like their ages difference has any sway over him. "You're hurt," he says, just as stubbornly. "Why are you always getting hurt?" he demands, like this is all her fault. Because it _is. _This crippling desire to see her healthy, still innocent, still without killing someone.

He never wants it to leave her, not entirely. But with each scrape and each wound, he learns that she's no longer their damsel in distress—no longer their girl with the golden heart. She's Sakura and she hasn't killed, but she's willing too, and that has changed. Sasuke stares at her with intensity, hoping his gaze will gauge some sort of reaction.

And as if the hell behind them doesn't matter, she reaches out to him with one soft touch on his cheek. "Naruto," she says quietly, looking at him earnestly, warmly, "he needs you now more than I do. I'll be fine protecting the escort," Sakura removes her palm, the soft touch gone, he grows cold, "so go and help them."

/

Like so many times before, they prevail, but he's left feeling a terrible ache.

The three of them, he himself, Naruto and Kakashi, defeated the opponents in no time, but once his back was turned to fight, Sakura was struck. He should have known the consequences of closing his eyes, should have foreseen this—her growth, her honing strength was still no match for chuunins. He hates himself now more than he did last time.

He returns to her, with Naruto in tow, like the shore always returns to the sand.

There's no tears this time, but he see's it in the way she runs her hand through her caked hair. There's nothing but resentment for herself in those eyes—he can still read her like a book. Sadly, he will never quite let go of this habit of hers.

—_get sakura, get her and never let her go_

He's fucked up again.

_three_

#

"Sasuke-kun, I love you!" she sobs, strangled and so desperate.

There's smoke in his eyes and his vision clouds over with all the promises he's breaking. With every word, every step, every stupid little mistake, he still doesn't change his mind. Even with her here, with her and her visible scars; they're still so different. She hasn't killed and he lives to kill. Sasuke shoves his hands into his pocket and begins to walk away.

"If you go, _I'll scream!_"

—_just... take sakura and keep her safe_

He appears behind her. They stand so still, the air waits for them to breathe. No words fall from her lips, just a tangled choke of things she's exhausted already. Sasuke keeps his eyes open—savours every detail. Makes it worth it, hopes that two words can correct a dozen wrongs.

(_they won't_)

But he tries anyway. "Sakura," quiet, soft spoken, "thank you."

/

He places her upon the bench, noticing the tear that hasn't made it from her eye yet.

It's no wound, no cut, no blood and it's not critical, but it's just as painful for him to witness. In spite of it all, he wipes it away, grazing her skin just a fraction too long. He has no right, but he's always been selfish and he still protects her.

Sasuke turns away, the moon his only companion, and closes his eyes to the darkness.

_four_

#

Heavy, the air is thick with every lie that spills from her mouth.

Sasuke hasn't seen her so close since he stood behind her, her body so fragile he could snap her neck in seconds. He watches, his eyes stinging and his memories a dirt track against his conscious. He barely remembers her, can hardly recall her voice. It's not like it was when he used to dream of her—of them all, all those years ago, stuck in a dirty hole with only the cold to keep him safe.

She's grown taller, her voice more feminine but scratching with something rawer, realer. Like she's killed.

This is the only pleasure he takes from her presence before him.

The girl with the golden heart, fingers stained with somebodies else's blood.

"Prove it," he finally says, his voice dull.

—_save her save her save her_

The chidori crackles like a brilliant bright light in his palm, his chakra trembling, his blood in his throat and his heart pounding nothing but revenge revenge revenge. She barely has time to gasp, the scream still stuck somewhere between betrayal and her lungs—he lunges forwards, ready to kill off yet another piece upon his chessboard, when his arm is shoved aside, missing contact completely.

There's only time for his narrowed eyes to meet Kakashi's.

/

Sasuke wobbles, his eyesight blurring like a mirage before him—he feels, rather and see's, every little memory before him.

Her skin, hot beneath his icy grip; her tears embedding themselves within his veins; her scared screams, rebounding off him and sending him halfway into madness—

—_sasuke-kun! oh, please, don't die, sasuke-kun_

And her hesitation, her devotion to him, still, runs through him like wildfire. Tens and thousands of visions, so many words and not enough time to right the wrongs, he whirls around and has her skin in his palm once again—except, this time, he squeezes hard enough to choke the memories out of them both.

Yet, he is thrown off once again, but this time, it's by Naruto.

The seeds of team seven, the bonds that once held them together, come crashing down upon them as his hands tried to strangle her. Their wounds, his revenge, her hopes, Naruto's determination. They're splitting further and further and he relishes in it all—Sasuke has long forgotten the feel of warmth against him.

_five_

#

Sasuke looks at her, her eyes wild and feral in the breaking sun.

He looks down, her kunai shoved deep into his stomach. She twists, for good measure, and he has the decency to wince as it churns within him. Sasuke tastes his own blood against his tongue, it slips out of his mouth and trails down his chin. Sakura reaches up with her free hand and cups his chin, something terribly familiar in the gesture.

There, she wipes his blood away, her eyes still blazing with every ounce of _hurt _he ever put her through.

"When we were twelve," she begins, her tone deadly soft, "you used to wipe the tears from my eyes," and then she twists the kunai a bit more, causing blood to spurt out of his mouth and land on her cheek, "and now we're sixteen and I'm wiping the blood from your lips."

Sasuke can barely breathe, the battlefield a haze around him, he only see's Sakura and all the fucking shit they've ever been through. His arms limp at his sides and his sharingan deactivated, they stare at each other like they're caught in a lovers quarrel. But the only love he feels is the love of her kunai connecting with his insides—like it was meant to be there, right from the start.

She's killed, she'll continue to kill, she was born to kill, eventually.

"So do it," he finally responds, as equally deadly soft.

Sakura says nothing, does nothing. For a few fleeting seconds, they just watch each other; his hellish eyes eat at her flesh, preserve a memory of the Sakura who loved him (_loves him_) and who kills him. A fitting end for an unfitting pair. Sakura pulls out the kunai that's taken a home inside him with one swift movement, his wound bleeding heavily.

With her kunai out, he falls to the ground and lands on his knees.

All around them, fire and ice connect, whilst here—in this moment, he recalls something so bitterly familiar it ignites something akin to morbid amusement within him. He stares at his hands, blood and dirt mixed together, and waits for her to bend down. She does.

Sakura tilts his chin up and scans his face; those lily pad eyes he used to call innocent, everything about them is a contradiction. She's not twelve anymore, she's a war hardened kunoichi, skin thick and fierce. Eyes like the bottom of the ocean. Sasuke waits for her to wipe more of his blood from him, waits for her to make the final blow.

_—sakura. thank you_

She presses chapped lips to his own reddened ones, her mouth hot and her grasp tight. Sasuke only reacts when she deepens, their blood mingling and her lips urging for some kind of a reaction. He kisses her back, kisses her like the war only ever existed between them. When really, he knows, if he wasn't so injured, he'd have her beneath his katana.

He feels her healing chakra entering him, and can only manage a smirk against her.

Sasuke pulls away, inches from her skin and breathes, "You still can't do it."

_six_

#

Sasuke reaches out and touches her cheek.

He can't see anything—only left with the ability to feel, he grasps at any opportunity possible. After the war, where he eventually teamed up with Naruto to defeat Madara and Obito, Sasuke came home. With Sakura to his left, the lily pad who hardly shakes, and Naruto, the blinding sunlight who is still an obnoxious annoyance, to his right.

She could have left him to die; she could have killed him with his regrets and his revenge, but she saved him. She punished him, showed him that she no longer needed him—could leave him there to break and burn if needs be—and would probably be happier without him. But she pulled him out from beneath a veil, took his chin and sealed herself into him.

Because after all, their wounds had never quite sewed themselves up.


End file.
